Thursday, February 25, 2016

I follow up a link for a job with the New Yorker as Associate Director, Audience Development. Am immediately blasted with a lot of language that would never be permitted in the pages of the, erm, New Yorker except possibly in a quirky little piece on corporatespeak.

Work
closely with digital leadership to determine and meet growth KPIs and insure that
they align with revenue strategy

Apply
SEO initiatives and best practices to the content strategy that will strengthen
and optimize both website and keyword rankings

Cross-functionally!? (or possibly ?!)
Customer monetization!?
Content executions!?
Project-manage (wha-? new verb to me, and while there ARE publications that embrace the new, the type of person who would embrace this one would never get a gig as editor at the, erm, New Yorker). Moving right along to the object, Project-manage all audience development touch points. OK, or, as the New Yorker would put it, okay, I take it, having read this text, that there are people out in the world who know what an audience development touch point is, and if you know you can probably swan through "associated components" without driving yourself insane by asking what it would mean for something to be a component of a touch point. If you are such a person you are, I can't help feeling, unlikely to warm to the, erm, New Yorker, let alone subscribe to it. And yet YOU are the person whose job is, I gather, to get more readers AND get them to pay for something you think is a load of bollocks.

It's as if a 3-star restaurant thought it could best be promoted by someone who ate Pedigree Chum in the home.

An agent told me last year he could get me a 6-figure deal on work in progress + rights to The Last Samurai. Had his reach not exceeded his grasp, I would naturally not have been exploring careers at Condé Nast. If I did not have credit card debts that weigh on my mind I would have stopped at "cross-functionally." Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.

I clicked on Continue, and was asked to complete a profile including a menu on Career Focus. The options:

Advertising
Corporate
Editorial
Entertainment
Technology

Hm.

I selected Entertainment.

And it was at this point, cats and kittens, that I decided to write a blog post instead.

Secondhand Sales

The Last Samurai was published in 2000 by Talk Miramax Books. First Talk went under, then Harvey Weinstein split from Disney and Miramax Books handed its books over to Hyperion, then Hyperion dwindled and handed the books back to Miramax who were not, in fact, interested in publishing books.

For a decade of the Miramax Wars readers faced a dilemma. They sometimes want to buy copies of The Last Samurai for friends. It was tempting to buy the book "As New" for $1.70 + $3.99 postage rather than for $14.95 with free shipping in an order of $20 or more, especially if there were many, many friends. The author got nothing on a secondhand sale -- but then, the author would get only $1.12 on the new book. To send the author $1.12 the reader would have to pay an extra $9.24. That's a pretty expensive goodwill gesture.

Goodwill doesn't have to cost that much. PayPal takes 30 cents + 3% on each transaction; if you send the author $1.50 by PayPal she will get $1.15. Many readers sportingly sent a donation - some were insanely generous, all went far beyond the call of duty.

New Directions has now reissued The Last Samurai, so if you want a new copy (or an e-book) you can easily get one. For those who find $0.01+$3.99p&p compelling --we're always grateful for the kindness of strangers.

i+e

John Chris Jones' The Internet and Everyone can be bought for £10: write to jcj AT publicwriting.netJCJ's website has a selection of reviews of this pioneering book.

Berlin

Linguistics

Greek, Latin

RhapsodesSociety for the Oral Reading of Greek and Latin: has recordings of Homer, Pindar, many others.

PerseusExtensive body of Greek and Latin texts in the original languages and in translation; offers ability to click on a word for a definition, grammatical information. Also has lexica, grammars, various other resources. NB: the texts are generally editions that are out of copyright rather than modern versions, so the reader is for the most part offered texts reflecting the state of scholarship at the end of the 19th century. The texts also have no apparatus criticus. So it is a useful resource, but one to be used with caution.